


True Love's Kiss

by BlindSwandive



Series: Masquerade fills [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Deathly sleeping curse, Dub-con/non-con (inability to consent), Dubious Consent, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Necrophilia (sort of)/Somnophilia (sort of)/one of them's corpselike is what I'm saying, Nobody's really dead, Safe sex FTW, Season/Series 12, Sleeping Beauty Elements, no seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 13:59:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16138721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive/pseuds/BlindSwandive
Summary: Sam is hit with a Sleeping Beauty-style deathly curse; Dean would do anything to wake him up.  Set mid-season 12.





	True Love's Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> My second--second--fill for the 2018 SPN-Masquerade prompt: _Sam’s corpse is beautiful. Dean awakens him with a true love’s fuck._

“You useless, thrice-damned hunters,” the witch was spitting at them, and the blood was starting to come black and fast from the wound Dean had left in her abdomen. “Just tearing through the world destroying us, destroying our families, because you’re too wretched to build your own homes and lives and loves.”

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” Dean said, smiling coldly. She could psycho-babble him all she wanted; she’d be dead in a minute and Sam and Dean would be the ones who walked away to live their lives.

“Serve you right,” she muttered, and coughed blood into her hand, then braced herself on the big wooden slab between them. She looked like she was swaying, getting ready to go down in a heap, her hands searching for a place to grip amidst the ingredients and bowls and mess in front of her.

“Dean, she’s working a spell!” Sam said suddenly, and Dean felt like an idiot not to have realized—he ran for her, but she was already finishing a sigil in her own blood, chanting quickly.

 _“Amore dorme morte!”_ she finished triumphantly, and slammed her palm onto the sigil while she swung the other arm in a wide arc, just as Dean sank a blade hilt-deep under her chin, her to stop her voice.

She hit the ground in a heap, but there were two thuds.

“Sammy, you okay?” Dean asked, before he’d even turned to look. He wiped the blade off on the witch’s clothes. There was no response.

Sam had been more or less disabled for most of the fight, from some trap the witch had laid that had taken his knee out from under him with an impossible twist, so Dean had ordered him to stay back and stay out of it. He’d been braced, standing, against the wall, but when Dean looked for him there now, he was gone. 

Dean made it around the slab in a second flat to find Sam lying on the floor, as boneless as a puppet with its strings cut. His already wounded leg was bent in a way Dean didn’t ever want to see again, and his eyes were glassy and vacant, staring at nothing.

“Sam,” Dean shouted, panic setting in. “Sammy!”

No amount of shaking roused Sam, and a slap to his cheek brought no tension back into his body. Other than his leg, Sam seemed completely uninjured, but something was clearly, desperately wrong. Dean felt for a pulse and got nothing; a breath and got nothing. 

“Sammy!” he shouted again, as if just being louder would somehow penetrate the veil.

Dean took a steadying breath and started chest compressions, trying to force Sam’s lungs and heart back into action. He pressed so hard and so many times he was sure he felt something crack beneath the heel of his palm. It didn’t seem to make the slightest difference. 

Neither did the rescue breaths he forced into Sam’s mouth.

Desperate, he gathered Sam into his arms, and there was a terrible looseness in Sam’s limbs. “Sammy, Sammy, no, Sammy...” he rambled, rocking, temporarily useless with panic.

When Dean managed to blink his eyes clear and will them focus, he saw three drops of blood on Sam’s cheek, just below his eye, like bizarre tears. They wouldn’t wipe away, not for Dean’s fingers, not for spit and scrubbing.

“Spell,” he said out loud, and offloaded Sam as quickly as he could without breaking his skull. “It’s a spell. We can reverse it. Right?” He went right back to the slab the witch had been working at, fishing out his phone as he did.

“Squirrel.” Crowley sounded uninterested at best, but that was kind of his way.

“No time, Crowley, get your mom here. Got a spell I need to break, fast.” Dean was turning pages he couldn’t make sense of in a book bound in what he hoped fervently was leather. “Sam got hit by a whammy and he’s got no pulse and this—this blood is like, tattooed in his skin, and—”

“Not making a lot of sense here, Dean. You’re going to have to slow down.”

“ _No time,_ ” Dean repeated, in a tone that would have put his own demon days to shame. “Get me a witch now, or so help me—”

“Yes, yes, I know: blah, blah, blah, terrible endless torture at your hands until I regret being born, et cetera. Such a flirt.”

“Crowley,” Dean growled in warning, and the line clicked dead.

“Dammit, Sammy,” Dean sighed, trying to ground himself. “You’re the one should be deciphering this mess, telling me what I need to do to break this thing.” Where was he even supposed to start?

Dean closed his eyes, took a long breath, and forced his brain to slow down, to focus. Then he looked for paper and something to write with.

***

Dean made a list of the ingredients that were in the bowl, as best as he could identify them. He wrote down the words the witch had finished the spell with (or their phonetic equivalent), copied down the smeared blood sigil, and started flipping through the spellbook on the slab for anything that might match. Of course, if she’d done this one from memory and it was in another book... He shoved that thought aside. It would be no help.

“You already owe me one,” came the sweet, lightly mocking brogue. Crowley had been and gone, apparently, but Rowena was slinking close with her carpetbag in hand.

“Rowena,” Dean said, and it was pure relief, bottled hope. “Amori dormi morte, mean anything to you?”

Her face contorted. “Thank God your pronunciation is dreadful, that’s _nothing_ you should go tossing about, darling.”

“But you know what it is?” he asked, grabbing her arm.

Rowena shrugged delicately out of his grasp. “I do. Much good that does us.”

Dean’s patience was thinned to the point of nonexistence. “Explain,” he barked.

“Think of it as the splinter of flax, or the poisoned apple,” she said, in that tone that mocked up a cover of tenderness over the essential hardness beneath. “The frozen sleep that can only be broken by true love’s kiss, metaphorically speaking.”

Dean cursed vividly.

“May I?” Rowena didn’t wait for his permission, but stepped carefully around Dean to go examine Sam, lifeless on the floor where Dean had left him. She knelt over him, scraping a finger over the stain of the spell on his cheekbone. “Poor, dear Samuel,” she lilted. “Dean, your darling brother is neither dead nor alive; he is trapped in an endless, dreamless sleep. And he will stay that way until his soulmate comes along to bounce him back awake.”

Of course. Dean closed his eyes and let out a harsh sigh. “The witch—she was bitching about hunters coming along and ruining homes without having any of their own. She knew he wouldn’t have a, a wife or a girlfriend or anything.”

“I hope for your sake that that’s not really the case,” Rowena said, and Dean might have believed she meant it. Almost. There was half a breath of real feeling, under there, he thought.

“I’ll—I’ll check around, see if...” Dean rubbed his face. The girl with the dog, maybe; would she count? If she would, would she even be willing to come and try it?

“What... what exactly are the rules, here?” Dean asked.

“I’m not _entirely_ sure,” Rowena admitted. “Most magic has a touch of poetic license. Perhaps if I could see the original text?” 

Dean wordlessly offered out the notes he’d taken, and the spellbook.

“Very close,” Rowena said, with a touch of admiration. “Your sigil work is very strong, my dear.”

Dean couldn’t make his mouth form the thanks, just nodded.

“Well, it doesn’t appear that that _particular_ spell is in this _particular_ book,” she said, gently, after a few minutes. “Perhaps if she had other books, I could take them with me, study them at my leisure and see if I can come up with anything...”

“Fine,” Dean said, “whatever you need. Is he—just, can you tell me if he’s going to be safe, in the meantime? Will he—I mean, he won’t starve to death, or anything?”

Rowena pursed her lips thoughtfully, and went back over to Sam’s body. She spent a minute or so poking and prodding, and there was a brief glow, before she rose and nodded. 

“Now, I can’t be completely certain,” she warned, raising her palms, “but I _believe_ he should be perfectly safe. He shouldn’t need food or warmth or air, and he shouldn’t rot.”

“Shouldn’t,” Dean repeated, a pit in his stomach.

“Yes,” she said, and this time her voice was tinged with pity—whether real or faked, though, Dean couldn’t tell. “You just take him some place safe, and I’ll take her books with me and let you know as _soon_ as I have any more information.”

“Safe? I thought you just said—”

“Yes, well—he won’t spontaneously fall apart, but he won’t spontaneously heal, either. If someone were to, oh, saw him in half, it wouldn’t do much good to wake him back up afterwards.”

Dean’s skin was crawling at that prospect. “Fine. You got my number?”

“Yes, dear.” Rowena was pulling out her phone.

“And you’ll call me right away?”

“Yes, dear,” she repeated. She was dialing. “Fergus, dear, meet me back where you left me in about ten minutes, will you? I’m just going to gather a few things here and then I’ll be set to go.” There was a pause, then, “No, he isn’t dead; it’s more of a deathly sleep kind of curse. Needs to be awoken by his _soulmate._ ”

Dean’s stomach somehow sank even lower.

“Fine,” Rowena said, wryly, “I’ll tell him. See you soon.”

Dean crouched by Sam, with a shaky sigh. “Tell me what?”

“Oh, nothing,” Rowena said, waving a hand. “Fergus is being cruel; it’s nothing to worry your pretty little head about.”

Dean looked up blearily, and his face most definitely said he didn’t care; he wanted to hear it.

“Oh, all right. He said that you two have a somewhat, um, complicated relationship,” she said, delicately. “That it’s possible someone who just loves Sam very dearly—say, enough to sell his soul, or murder Death—could... perhaps... break the curse.”

“Ah,” Dean said, flatly. But the heat up his neck wasn’t quite so stoic. “Well. You let me know when you know for sure what will and will _not_ break the curse.” He hefted Sam up in his arms and started for the door. 

Maybe tomorrow he’d worry about what damage Rowena could do with whatever magical artifacts or grimoires she’d find here, but for today, nothing was more important than getting Sam back from wherever he had gone. Whatever that would take.

***

Three days passed without a call from Rowena, and Dean started to feel like he was going to go out of his mind.

He dragged Cass in, to no effect; Cass could tell Sam was healthy, after a fashion, and could tell with an arm up to the elbow in Sam’s business that his soul was still embedded in his body, though it was in a kind of stasis, only ‘giving off a dim but steady light.’ He healed Sam’s mangled leg and the ribs Dean had broken with CPR, so he’d be well whenever Dean managed to break the curse, and he promised to look into the curse as best he could, so Dean thanked him and sent him on his way.

Then Dean drank. A lot.

He stared at Sam. A lot. 

Dean researched in the Men of Letters archives as well as he could, but it was uphill sledding; Sam was the one who had gotten a handle on their filing system, such as it was. And it mostly wasn’t.

“Sammy,” he asked, over coffee doused heavily with whiskey, “how the hell do you manage with this crap?”

Sam didn’t reply. 

“Lot of help you are,” Dean muttered. “Don’t even know why I bothered to lug your ass down here.”

‘Here’ was the strategy table in the war room. As strange as it felt seeing Sam’s deathly body lying around, Dean had realized fairly quickly that it wasn’t as bad as _not_ seeing it, and he’d taken to just moving Sam wherever he planned to be, for the day. He’d deposit Sam on Sam’s bed every night, sometimes throwing a blanket over him depending on whether he himself felt hot or cold, and then he’d stumble down into the kitchen in the morning to start his coffee, decide whether he’d spend more time in the war room or the library or the archives that day, and then he’d go fetch Sam to bring him along.

Because it was funny, he used Sam’s body to prop his books up. (He only occasionally balanced pens on the tip of Sam’s nose, or posed him for dumb photos; it broke the monotony and lifted his spirits, but the wave of guilt always turned a little nauseous afterwards, so it wasn’t worth repeating often.) By the end of the day, the books and notes had often piled up so high that he more or less had to dig Sam back out to put him to bed.

Sometimes he didn’t bother going to bed, just fell asleep in the middle of a tome right at the table. At least it saved him carrying the felled tree that was his brother up or down stairs.

After a week, Dean found he was unwilling to leave Sam alone at all, even to sleep.

Falling asleep at the strategy table was destroying his neck, so he’d carried Sam to Sam’s bed again and tried to leave him there, but the thought of him lying, unseeing and alone in the dark, was standing all the hairs up on his neck. He’d tried to put it out of mind, but then he’d lingered in the doorway, again and again thinking of just one more thing to tell Sam or ask him; something about what he’d read, telling him how he needed to warm up his room and give it some character, asking him what he was missing most about being, well, alive, deriding his musical tastes. 

Dean wasn’t sure whether there was any kind of consciousness in Sam to speak of, or whether that had been frozen by the curse, too, but he couldn’t help but think that _he’d_ go insane if he were stuck awake and alone like that for hours on end, unable to do anything at all. He couldn’t let Sammy suffer through that. (And if staying nearby eased the separation anxiety Dean was going through, too, well, that was just a happy accident.) 

“If you _are_ awake,” Dean threatened, stepping further into the room, “and you say one damn word about this later, I will release all the embarrassing photos I’ve taken of you this week onto the internet, swear to God.” But he climbed uneasily onto the bed beside his brother anyway, punched the pillow fluffy, and turned out the light. He’d slept like the dead.

When Dean woke up the next morning, he wasn’t sure where he was or who he was with. There was a hard shoulder under his cheek, and a distinctly male chest under his arm, and that was unusual, to say the least. Sam had warmed up from the contact (he was normally just a little too cool these days, though not cadaver cold), so it took even longer for Dean to re-orient himself.

“Bunker,” he confirmed; there was no mistaking that marble.

“Bed,” he got next, and “not mine,” because there was nothing quite like memory foam.

“Body,” came next, and “not female,” and that was a little scary, considering the way his traditional morning erection was snug up against a slim, muscular hip. But his eyes focused eventually, and the tattoo that matched his solidified into a single image, and the tension just eased right out of him. 

“Jesus, Sammy, had me scared,” he mumbled, unconsciously nuzzling his nose up against Sam’s shoulder. “Thought I’d wound up sleeping with some random dude somehow.”

He could imagine Sam responding, ‘Yeah, but I’m still a dude,’ just as clearly as if Sam had been there, and Dean snorted. 

“You don’t count. Too much of a chick. Come on, let’s go get coffee.”

Another week passed. Dean alternated between their bedrooms, because he really missed the memory foam, but he was sure Sam would be happier in his own bed. Dean could be sensitive like that. Especially when no one could tell on him. He even changed Sam’s clothes for him, once, because even though one benefit of being in a frozen, death-like stasis was not sweating, he had been on a hunt in those clothes and they weren’t at their best. And anyway, it was never comfortable to sleep in jeans.

On the seventeenth morning after he’d brought Sam back to the bunker, Dean rumpled Sam’s hair and, per usual, told Sam it was time to get up for coffee.

Sam’s impassive response made Dean sigh, this time. “All right, you lazy bastard, I’ll make it and bring it back,” he said, but he didn’t move. He might have even dozed back off for a few minutes. When he came back to with a snort, he picked back up where he’d left off. “You know, in a just world? The coffee would make itself.” He rubbed his face blearily. “That’s what Heaven really should have had—spontaneous coffee. A hot tap just for that. And good stuff, not that sour, weak-ass, light-roast shit.”

Sam—his internal Sam—pointed out that the light roast had a higher caffeine content, so in a way, it was stronger, and Dean didn’t know whether to take him at his word, since, well, it was all in his head (he still had a pretty good handle on that fact). It would be an odd thing to dream up if it weren’t true, though, so he figured Sam must have told him about it at some point; he must have accidentally been listening.

Dean crawled out of the true Heaven that was memory foam. He was halfway to the door when he paused, peered back at Sam. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute, what did I just say? Something important. What...?”

Sam was unhelpful.

“Dammit, Sammy...” Dean sighed. “Agh.” He wasn’t awake enough for this shit, yet. Coffee first; epiphany later.

He was dumping grounds into the percolator when he flashed back to Heaven.

It had been such a terrible thing, when they’d gone there; an open wound for months. But sometimes in Purgatory, when he was tucked far up a tree to get a little rest, he’d thought about it, about the one thing that gave Heaven a slight edge over the realer alternatives, and that had been the promise that Sam would be there with him, for eternity. Ash had said that was reserved for rare cases; for soulmates.

If a soulmate couldn’t break a true love curse, who could?

Dean abandoned the coffee and ran, stumblingly, to the control room to double-check the locks and wards. Nothing-- _nothing_ \--could come in on them. Not for a little while, at least.

He was standing over Sam again with his mind racing fast enough to make him dizzy when he realized he’d better check in with Rowena, just in case. He pinched his nose, dug through his phone, and shuffled back off to the kitchen to finish making the coffee while he called.

“Don’t you know the 10-10 rule, Dean?” Rowena didn’t actually sound like she’d been asleep, but, whatever.

“Anything on the curse?”

“Yes, good morning to you, too, darling. A little foreplay, please, if you would.”

Dean cursed under his breath, covered his eyes against the evil that was overhead lighting. “Fine. G’morning, Rowena,” he mumbled, “how are you today, that’s great, now have you learned anything about the curse?”

“Nothing very definitive, I’m afraid.”

“S’been two weeks. Nothing?” Dean’s heart was gamely trying to race, even through the fog of caffeine deprivation. He dumped grounds into the percolator and added water.

“Nothing we weren’t already fairly sure about,” she said, and sounded a little sheepish.

“You can keep the books,” Dean said, in a flash of cynical inspiration.

“I can’t believe you’d think—Really, the implication that I would-- _Really,_ Dean—”

Dean sighed. “Save it, Rowena. Just tell me, who, technically, is going to be capable of waking Sam here?”

“Well, the term _amoreverda_ refers to something like true love or soulmate, but frankly, even something as simple as how much damiana she used could affect just how intense of a connection we’re talking about.”

“Great,” Dean muttered. “And this—this metaphorical ‘true love’s kiss,’ how serious are we talking about that getting?”

Rowena made a hmming sound. “If he was a girl, I’d say just stick it in somewhere and hope for the best, if you will pardon my crass term of art. For a man... I’m sure we can’t really expect him to ejaculate, but a great deal of magic is in the intention, so something that means sexual congress to at least one of the participants _should_ do the trick, whatever that looks like. Again, the ratio of goatweed to valerian...”

“Right, right,” Dean sighed, pressing a hand over his gut to still the butterflies. “Stick it somewhere and hope for the best.”

“Basically,” Rowena agreed. “Listen, Dean, it’s possible you’ll need some kind of phrase or sigil to finish breaking the curse. Try a-mo-re li-be-re ner-vi-a.”

Shit. “And if that one doesn’t work?”

“Call back and I’ll give you another to try. Best wishes for the stamina of the soulmate, darling,” she cooed, “Ta-ta.”

The line clicked dead. _Amore libere nervia,_ he repeated first in his mind, then aloud, over and over. Something about love, freedom, and nerves? He poured a cup of coffee, hands shaking a little. “Amore libere nervia,” he muttered, “amore libere nervia...”

He burned his tongue on his coffee, and then spilled some when he kicked a step rather than successfully climbing it. “Sonofabitch,” he cursed, then, “amore libere nervia, amore libere nervia...”

The coffee was like tar; he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but he was pretty sure it would dissolve the spoon if you stirred it. He splashed some water into it from the sink in his room and was able to choke it down, that way, while he explained with not a little shame what was going to happen, that he’d try to be careful with Sam, that this was all Heaven’s fault anyway and don’t you go bashing me if you wake up and remember this ‘cause I’m only doing this for you you hexed bastard.

But the prickling in the skin on the back of his neck said something a little different.

The heat in his skin said something different, too. And the way he wasn’t having to grab a copy of Busty Asian Lovelies to get his dick in the game.

No need to admit any of that out loud, though. Just in case.

Dean started peeling Sam out of the lounge pants and sweatshirt he’d put him in with real tenderness; the flickering memory of stripping Sam to put him in the bath when they were kids made something go a little queasy, inside, but also shot up a flare of deep protectiveness and affection.

 _Soulmates,_ he thought, and rumpled Sam’s hair fondly. So long as he didn’t think about it too closely, he could handle that. He went for Sam’s t-shirt and socks.

Dean shucked out of his own lounge pants and tee and felt cold; this place was chilly in winter. He wanted to just get back under the covers with Sam and get on with it, but with Sam lying bare in front of him, still and quiet and unbitching and unjudging for once, he couldn’t help but just stare for a minute.

Sam’s open eyes were haunting. That part, Dean was sure he’d never get used to, even if this were to go on for years. Nothing should be that long unblinking—nothing that wasn’t taxidermied and glass-eyed. The watery any-color that seemed to change based on the light and the surroundings (and for all Dean knew maybe what Sam had had to eat or whether he had to pee) was greyer, here and now, overcast. His eyes hadn’t even gotten red and dry after all this time, some side effect of the stasis Dean supposed. 

Too much roughing-up had made Sam’s hair start to look more or less like a bird’s nest, so Dean tried carding his fingers through it to make it a little more presentable. It didn’t make a big difference; Sam would probably kill him when he got a look at it, because that was going to be a two-rounds-of-conditioner and at least one broken comb kind of mess.

Dean didn’t grin, but it was a close thing. “Sorry ‘bout the hair, Sammy,” he offered, even if he wasn’t.

His body—Sam’s body was so long and lean, too long to really comfortably fit in either of their beds without curling up some, and lying flat on his back like he was left his ankles off the end of the mattress. Dean did pull the sheet and blanket out and over Sam’s feet, because seeing them bare was making Dean cold. He climbed onto the bed on his knees, then, ditching his own socks, but he wasn’t quite ready to be done looking.

Sam just looked so _relaxed._

Even when Sam slept, there were still the marks of tension on his forehead, in the tight line of his mouth. But now—somehow, now, under a curse and half-dead-- _now_ he seemed peaceful. His face looked young and bright, if terrifyingly without affect. His limbs were loose, boneless, and his shoulders soft. He had none of that bowstring-taut reflex coiled up and ready to spring, no fight and no flight left in him. He was helpless and defenseless. He was beautiful.

Sam was beautiful.

Dean felt that fierce flash of protectiveness again, and something else a little like it but bent awry—something that still made him want to beat out all comers and stand guard and growl, but which didn’t have quite the same soft underbelly. Whatever this thing was was slicker and rawer, something that would live slithering along the bottom of a lake or crawling out from under rocks. The just-protective part of him wanted to pull the blankets up and break the curse. The other thing wanted that, too, but wanted to feel their skin stick and slide against one another while he did.

 _Soulmates,_ Dean thought again, climbing up alongside Sam. He reached across his still form to fish around in his dresser drawer, and then pulled the covers up over his shoulders.

“Sorry, baby brother,” he murmured, but wasn’t entirely sure if he was. On mad impulse, he kissed just beside Sam’s mouth, but the lack of response there made all the hairs stand up on his skin and he decided he wouldn’t try that again. The rest of Sam wouldn’t respond, either, but a cold fish in bed was less upsetting than an attempt at a kiss getting no traction, somehow. One was disappointing, but the other was humiliating. (Not that Dean would ever admit to having had that experience.)

Dean shivered, and pulled the covers up tighter under his and Sam’s chins. Sam’s glassy doll stare was starting to throw him, and the thought of Sam suddenly waking up and shooting him some kind of dirty, accusatory look wasn’t exactly something Dean was looking forward to, so he carefully tipped Sam’s face away to the side, and it fell limply where it was directed. Inspired, he rolled the rest of Sam the same way, onto his side, and wrapped his arms around him tightly from behind like a wrestling hold. 

Dean stifled a laugh on Sam’s shoulder (his larger brother was the little spoon), but just kept shifting and scrambling awkwardly until he could get Sam budged into what he hoped was a relatively comfortable curl (if that mattered), both knees drawn up but the top one pulled a little higher, closer to Sam’s chest. His lower leg made a comfortable shelf, then, for Dean to rest his knee on while he slotted himself snugly up against Sam’s back and bottom.

“You can do this,” Dean whispered to himself, bracingly, “you can do this...”

The feel of the cleft of Sam’s ass against Dean’s hard-on, and of the soft skin on the backs of his upper thighs where the hair was sparser, was almost upsettingly good. Even with all those hard muscles relaxed, there was a solidity, a weight from them stretched long and lean under the surface, and Dean couldn’t help remembering how Lisa’s yoga pants had (improbably and hilariously) been made by a company called Hard Tail. The thought twisted something up inside of him, and he promised himself as much bourbon as he could drink if he could just focus for now and make it through this.

Sam would probably look good in Downward-Facing Dog, though, all long, lean legs. Or Cow pose, knees planted, low back slung down, ass hefted invitingly in the air... Anyone worth looking at was worth looking at in Cow Pose. Dean wasn’t going to forget that, any time soon.

Dean fumbled under the covers to get the condom packet torn open. He let his mind wander a little longer on that while he rolled the latex down—how would Sam look in Plough pose (other than like he was trying to suck his own dick)? Or Camel, chest arched out and taut like a hunting bow, grabbing his own ankles?

Maybe he’d give up on all the goddamn running if Dean said he’d let Sam teach him yoga mornings instead. Maybe Sam wouldn’t even bring up Lisa if he mentioned it. (Dean seemed to remember having threatened Sam’s life or wellbeing if he ever dared, so maybe there was a chance Sam would let it lie. Then again, maybe monkeys would come flying out of his ass.)

Dean squirted out enough lube against Sam’s hole to oil an airline hanger. He wished to hell he had latex gloves lying around somewhere closer than the kitchen, but he made do with tearing open a second condom, snugging it tight over his trigger finger and running it through the thick ooze of slick before wincing in sympathy and pushing his finger inside of Sam.

It was—impossibly, bizarrely—easy.

“Right,” Dean said aloud, feeling like an idiot. No muscle tension. He pulled the opening of the condom wider and withdrew halfway so he could push in two fingers for a minute, then three, twisting and massaging just to make sure every square millimeter inside was slick and safe; if he left even a microscopic tear behind he would _not_ live it down. (At least, that’s how he tried to think about it; the fact that the guilt would eat him alive was something he was less comfortable admitting, even if it was truer. One wince from Sam coming out of the toilet in the next week or so and Dean would be running into burning buildings.)

With some little disgust, Dean tugged the squelching condom free and tossed it far out of view so he wouldn’t have to think about it for a while. He wrapped his fist around the one covering his dick, instead, indulging in a few twists to firm up, and nudged the blunt head into the now (thankfully) warmer pool of lube and up against the only gentle resistance of Sam’s body.

Slipping inside of him felt like coming home.

Sam wasn’t tight, really. He wasn’t even as hot on the inside as he would be if he were more truly alive. But he was warm enough, and there was a smooth slide, and pressure from the weight of Sam’s muscles and upper leg bearing down on him, and Dean had all of Sam wrapped up in his arms. It wasn’t making him dizzy or wild or hot all over, but he felt inexplicably safe, here, sound, and warm. 

_Soulmates._

Dean yanked at the covers again, protectively trying to get Sam covered from the neck down, even if that meant Dean was more or less going to be breathing blankets for the time being. His eyelashes were tickled by Sam’s hair, and his mouth was up against the knob at the top of Sam’s spine, and if he was idly kissing it now and then, that couldn’t really be helped, could it?

Dean spread his hold a little more, one arm over Sam’s pecs and the other low around his waist, just to feel closer. Even brushing up against Sam’s soft dick didn’t upset him the way he thought it probably should. Nothing could upset him the way losing Sam would, though. Everything—everything—seemed small and insignificant, next to that. He would do anything to bring Sam back—even this.

And if it didn’t hurt his heart like he was expecting it to, he would cope with that when he had to.

Dean rolled his hips up into his brother’s body as gently as he could. He couldn’t get much distance back and forth with his hips, but that was only because his arms were proving unwilling to loosen up on the body in his arms. It would be enough; Dean was sober and awake, and his dick didn’t let him down in times like that. _Soulmates_ became a kind of repeating pulse in his brain, and _Amore libere nervia,_ and the part of it that meant _Love,_ and apart from that Dean ceased to think, anymore, just slid out into the edges of his body, into the cocoon of warmth he’d made and the sweet rubbing of nerves and skin. His breath condensed hot and damp on Sam’s neck, and Dean’s sweat began to slick the places where their bodies were flush, and he was almost fooled into believing Sam was there with him, moving with him, from the way he rocked just out of sync with Dean as they slid along one another.

It was getting hard to breathe; something was thick in Dean’s throat, choking him, but he couldn’t think about that now, or about the way his eyes were stinging. There was something here too big to look at, too much. He tried to crawl further inside of Sam, to get his body somehow closer, held tighter. There _was_ heat, now, and something half desperate, and Dean felt drugged, cut adrift in space, with Sam’s body his only anchor, and there was nothing else in this room, in this bunker, in this state, but the places where they were touching, damp and real and solid.

Dean came on a heartbeat, startled and jerking and unsuspecting. “Sammy,” he choked, then “shit,” then “Am-amore libere nervia!” 

It was as welcome as peeling off his own skin, but he forced himself to withdraw from Sam, tying off and dropping the condom off the side of the mattress where he hoped it wouldn’t be seen. “Sammy,” he tried again, shifting back to make room, and pulled Sam flat on his back again.

Sam was blurry. 

Or rather, Dean’s eyes were blurry, so he dug the heel of one palm in until he could see. Sam’s eyes—Sam’s eyes were _closed._

“Sammy,” Dean repeated, urgently, shaking his shoulder. The hope was huge enough to fill his chest, dangerous and bright. “Sammy, you there? You awake?”

An endless moment stretched out thin, stretching Dean’s nerves fit to snap them in half, and then—then Sam groaned, a sound like the worst hangover imaginable, the kind of hangover that two weeks of water and clean living wouldn’t cure.

Sam opened his mouth, and the click it made was thick and sticky. No other sound came out. 

“Thank God,” Dean said, stuffing down the emotion welling up. “Oh, Sammy, thank God.”

Sam’s palms came fumbling out from under the blanket, rubbing his eyes slow and hard, then his throat. He tapped his throat, and Dean knew the signal, reaching wildly for his mostly empty mug of cold sludge-coffee and pressing it up against Sam’s lips.

“That’s—disgusting,” Sam managed, after he choked it down.

“Sorry,” Dean said, but he couldn’t stop grinning. Two and a half weeks of only posing for himself meant he didn’t even think of withholding a hug, just clutched Sam around the shoulders tight.

“Water?” Sam asked, after a minute. His movements were as slow as if he were underwater, and he wasn’t really returning the hug, but he wasn’t shrugging out of it, either. Dean would call that a win, for now.

“You got it,” he said, eagerly, throwing himself out of bed and sucking a shocked breath when his bare feet hit the floor. “Shit, shit, shit,” he whispered, hopping for the sink as fast as he could and (thoughtfully) rinsing out the mug before refilling it. He got back under the covers so fast he splashed them both a little, but he didn’t care—he didn’t care about anything but Sam, warm and alive, beside him.

Sam tried to take the cup, but couldn’t, and Dean filled the gap, holding it for him and even helping him lift his head.

“Feel like I’ve been run over,” Sam grumbled, rough and raw, once he’d swallowed down most of the cup. “And like—”

He stopped, frowning, and didn’t try to finish the sentence.

Dean felt his skin getting hot. “Right,” he said, quickly, to cover it, “let’s—let’s get you a shower and some food, okay?”

“Dean, what... what happened?”

“I’ll explain everything later,” he said, giddy and—and drunk on it all, and scared, and bursting with joy. “Little later. Let’s just—Christ, Sammy, thank God you’re back.” And this time when he wrapped an arm over Sam, clutching him tight, Sam patted him back, confused but fond, and quiet. 

_Soulmates,_ Dean thought again, and didn’t ever, ever want to let go.


End file.
